My Manic and I
by Faceslikemine16
Summary: Once, when they came back from the victory tour, she asked him. "Am I mad?" He had kissed her, the first time he kissed her "Oh sweetheart," he said. "We all are." Finnick and Annie oneshot. Rated T for swearing


**A/N Just a little/long one shot about Annie and Finnick but mainly Annie after the rebellion. Reviews greatly appreciated, enjoy x**

My Manic and I.

Sometimes she is back in the arena again. The slam of a door is the boom of a canon. The career's beefy arm slices through the air. She sees the last desperate look Zander's eyes bright clear impossible blue like the sea on a late summer morning. Before they glaze over forever his head bounds across the ground and his pale blonde hair flops over his face, his tongue lulls from his mouth. She opens her mouth to scream but nothing comes out. The earth rumbles and rips apart under her feet she's running, she's falling. Bits of rock fly through the air, fast. Slow. She can see each piece individually. She reaches out to touch one. Then Finnick pulls her back, she's in his arms. He whispers softly in her ear.

"I'm here, I'm here and I'm never letting go."

The arena is gone… for now.

Sometimes she can sit for hours silent and utterly still. When she does that she's not here anymore she's not quite sure where she goes. Finnick asked her once. She said she watches the world from under water, under the glassy silvery skin. Hearing little, seeing strange and beautiful things sometimes, butterflies with tangerine wings, school of silver fish swim through the air. She doesn't mind as long as he's there her green eyed boy, when she comes back. He calls it her sea levels.

Sometimes she is manic. She storms and screams till she's hoarse. Shakes violently and rocks back and forth. Flashbacks erupt through her mind and her vision in scarred lightening glares of things she doesn't want to see. Sometimes Finnick's not there and she remembers she's not really there either and then she's lost entirely in reality and the walls close in so tightly she can feel the weight of the air. So she drifts away.

Sometimes she can be by herself, she can sit in the eye of her torturous thoughts for days and there is nowhere else she would rather be. She requests an audience with her demons. She wants to know how ugly she is, how much they all suffered, the blood, the gore, Finnick hates her, and she's a selfish, selfish bitch. Pull back the veil, let them in and let them in. She wants them.

Sometimes she can't be alone at all, every single thought hurts it belongs to a different person. She can't breathe. She can't escape screaming doesn't help. She hides and shivers against his chest she looks into his amazing green eyes. Smells the salt of the sea and the shaving cream he uses sharp and cool she feels safe and she goes away again, it's almost like falling asleep.

Once, she asked him- after they came back from the victory tour. Twelve days of hell, twelve days of being half dragged out onto stage. She could barely speak the words came out of her mouth jumbled and broken. She couldn't understand herself or the alien language she was speaking. She gripped at the microphone and smiled frozenly at the faceless crowd below. She pressed her hands over her ears. She wondered if she is real, she is always standing on the edge of control. They hold tight to her, don't let her get away. I'm not real, I'm not real. They put her in beautiful dresses: lace, satin and scarlet velvet. Piled her brown hair on the top of her head, draped it over her shoulders. Painted on a different face, covered her with jewels. Capitol men with charming bright white smiles and too loud laughs leaned forward and pinched her breasts so hard it brought tears to her eyes.

"Am I mad?"

He had kissed her then long and softly, the first time he kissed her. She realised she loved him. It had made her so happy to love. Her heart swollen to twice its size, she smiled and smiled. He couldn't help mirroring her.

"Oh sweetheart," he said "Of course, we all are."

Finnick's gone. They keep on telling her that, they don't let her go away anymore. She is stuck in this white room. The Doctor's with kind if slightly exasperated eyes say things like: anxiety, stress, and trauma. They give her pills, pale pink that taste like sour paper.

Finnick's gone.

She stopped talking for a year when she was eighteen. That was when she found the cove hidden by an eight foot wall of slimy black boulders, she used to go for walks with Finnick and he would talk and flirt and she would say nothing, just hold onto his hand and laugh sometimes. She walked up to the edge of the cove. The sea the same colour of Zander's eyes swelled and ripped into lacy white waves. She stepped over the edge and dropped like a stone.

"Annie, Annie!" He screamed by the time he had climbed over the edge he was crying. She was sitting in the sand.

"Oh god, I thought…" It was her turn to hold him to dry his tears, to never let go.

In the cove, that day she found the most perfect pearl the colour of coal.

"It's so lovely," He pushed aside her long brown hair. "You're lovely, no one has hair like this in the capitol… actually I'm not sure if anyone has hair in the capitol period."

"Do people in the capitol take off their wigs when they sleep with you or do they fall off?" She asked. He laughed until he cried.

When she started talking she didn't stop. "I love you, I love you and I love you."

The next time he went to the capitol she took the pearl and hid it under a pile of rocks. Every day she removed one. She did that every hunger games to stop her going insane and he always came back. Always.

So, she doesn't believe them. He's sitting on the end of her bed, can't they see him? He is bronze haired and green eyed with his dimpled smile. She jabbers and jabbers about him until the words join up and become nonsense. It is his turn to drift in and out. She stuffs the pills beneath the heavy mattress and walks right into his arms.

"Most people think I'm a vain prat." He said after the first time they made love, she curled up against his side.

"I don't," She promised. "I love you,"

"Entirely reciprocated,"

Annie scowled at him,

"Oh you really are irresistible I love you too, more, lots."

She is thoughts, memories and madness. Very little else, they force her to take the pills shove her into reality. She fights. She claws in a way she never could fight in the arena. She needs him, don't they understand she needs him. They stick a needle and pale green fluid sinks into her arm.

The last thing she truly remembers before she went insane. She doesn't count Zander's death. Was the sunrise on top of the mountain, it was so beautiful. Lavender and slate grey clouds pushed to the side, a blush of blue striped across the sky surrounded by hazy gold and pink of the dawning sun. So beautiful and so fake, she didn't realise the capitol could create something so beautiful. She hadn't thought it was possible. She had hated them for it.

She told Finnick that, she told him everything.

"I'm going to marry you one day," He said. They were laying together, in their secret place a cove on the golden sand and dried dark seaweed brought in by the tide. He had his hand in his and he kept kissing the palm.

"Aren't you supposed to ask?"

"Oh right, Annie Cresta will you take this incredible honour and become my wife?"

"Oh should I be so honoured…"

"I'm sorry did I mention I'm a vain prat?" She rolls over so she is on top of him and kisses his lips, his throat and his forehead.

"My vain prat."

"I_ am _here really," He whispers gently in her ear. "So are you darling, don't forget it."

She laughs and takes hold of his hand but it feels wrong somehow. They've taken away her ring, the ring he gave her on their wedding day with its delicate silver band, square sapphire, held in by two seed pearls.

One day when she's feeling sane, sane ish she asks for it back. The Doctors exchange looks. She watches them coolly.

"I'm not going to kill myself with it." She says, for the first time in several years she feels cross and irritable, it's an odd feeling.

"What do you think I'll do swallow it?" She slides it back onto her ring finger and closes her eyes puts her hands over her heart and floats away but she can't float far enough.

Johanna comes to visit her. Her skin is a little yellow and her eyes large and dark. She smiles sourly.

"I'm mad too now." She says when Annie says nothing after a while.

"We're all mad, sweetheart." She says and kisses her hand. Johanna bursts into tears, somewhere dimly Annie thinks she is probably one of the only people who isn't shocked to find Johanna can cry.

At last they tell her she is better, well better ish. She still sees Finnick but she doesn't argue into hysteria when they tell her he's dead. She can't bring herself to ignore him like they tell her to. She's Annie Cresta she's still a little vague and not quite there. They look at each other and think well we tried. They give her grey military uniforms to wear, one day someone brushes out her hair and braids it, she hates that she wants to hide behind her hair. They take her to a room with the other victors and President Coin who gives her a sickly smile. She looks at the table.

Someone says President Snow will die today. Annie feels nothing she doesn't want anyone to die but even now she fears President Snow and his bloody mouth, she doesn't like fear, she doesn't like feeling but somehow she's still here. Katniss comes and sit down next to her, puts a white rose onto the table they smile weakly at each other.

The only words she hears are 'Capitol' 'Hunger Games' and 'Children' she wants to cover her hears rock and shake. But she doesn't do that so much anymore. Peeta the blonde boy who made her beautiful wedding cake votes no, angrily.

"Annie?" He asks her. She thinks she sees Finnick walking into the room but when she blinks it is only in her mind's eye.

"I vote no with Peeta," She says. "So would Finnick if he were here."

"But he isn't, because Snow's mutts killed him," Johanna reminds her.

But Annie has gone again. Truly gone for the next few days, she comes to in the hospital. Johanna is there, Snow and Coin are dead, and she promises the vote for the hunger games has been declared void.

"What about Katniss?" She asks worriedly.

Johanna shakes her head "She's on trail. I'm glad Coin's dead,"

They look around the white room with its padded walls and the smell of disinfectant.

"Shall we get out of here?"

"Hell, yes." Annie says the words slip out of her mouth without her really thinking about it. "Hell fucking yes."

The next time a nurse comes they sit like wide eyed angels on the bed. She turns her back, she forgets they are victors. They run around her back shut the door and lock it and tear down the corridor, Annie runs like she hasn't run since before her Hunger Games. With the speed and flight that earned her the seven in the training scores. The ground feels real beneath her feet, she is real. By the time they get onto the train for district four they are laughing and laughing. No one tries to stop them.

She doesn't realise he is there not for a long time. It is only when she goes to visit Katniss's mother, her arms full of wild flowers daisy, rue, lavender and sweet yellow primroses. On the day Katniss is finally released- that someone notices. She doesn't like hospitals, so she doesn't hear her the first time.

"I'm sorry?"

"How far along are you dear?" Mrs Everdeen says.

She should panic, freak out. She is growing something inside her, something she has to look after she can barely look after herself. She thinks all this but none of the thoughts drown her. She cradles her bump. She drifts she dreams of green eyed little girls and boys with dimpled smiles. She knew he wouldn't leave her, she knew.

Sometimes she forgets and the tide comes in. She runs through the howling wind and rain. Stumbles over the cliff she screams in frustration, kneels on the damp sand throws away the dark pebbles. She has to find it her fingers scrabble at the ground. She has to find it. Finnick kneels down beside her.

"Go home sweetheart,"

"I can't- I have to." Annie explains to her fingers.

"It'll be alright, I love you."

So she walks back out of the freezing night and into her house. Her toddler ran into the corridor and hugged her legs. She kissed his soft bronze curls. He has enormous green eyes just like his father.

"Look mummy," he holds out his chubby little hand and drops the pearl into her long fingered one.

She doesn't cry in front of him, she's his mother. Don't look in the wrong places. She reminds herself, come back home. Back home to Finnick. She's ok, ok ish.


End file.
